MORE REASONS FOR WRITING THE RECTOR: Part the Fifth

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,/ Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great judgment seat. Kipling

In his lame apology for one-handed conferral of priestly orders, the Blunderer compares the rites of some Eastern  Churches with those of the Roman Catholic Church. The useless effort proves the wisdom of the old Scholastic saw: omnis comparatio claudicat ("every comparison limps").

Our rebuttal to the Bonehead? It's a short and not so sweet

SO WHAT!

We remind everyone, including the Blunderer, that Pope Pius XII, in his 1947 apostolic constitution (the only text that counts in this question),  juridically determined for the Roman rite the matter and form required for valid ordination in the future. Past practice within and without the Roman rite is of no account.* As one of Tony's own experts opined, Constitutio haec vim retroactivam non habet ("this constitution does not possess retroactive force.")** 

Therefore, it seems to us very simple: after April 28, 1948, the only valid matter for priestly ordination in the Roman rite is the imposition of the bishop's (two) hands. Nothing else matters, so to speak. All this business about Byzantine, Coptic, or Maronite rites is not germane. If you're going to be an undoubted priest of the Roman rite in the wake of the promulgation of Sacramentum Ordinis, you must receive the imposition of (both) the bishop's hands. In light of the explicit definition found in Pius's apostolic constitution, one-handed conferral of priestly orders can only be viewed as a defect in the Roman rite of ordination.

Whether one-handed conferral is an essential defect or not must wait until the Church decides the question, an event that may not happen for quite some time. In the meanwhile, a deeply solicitous regard for the salvation of souls demands that one-handed priestly orders be considered, for safety's sake, an essential defect. Here we must heed the opinion of the Spanish Dominican Antonio Royo Marín:

If there is well-founded and prudent doubt over whether or not something essential was missing, the ordination ought to be repeated sub conditione ["conditionally"], even though a higher order might have already been received....***

So, don't allow yourself to be led astray. Toss out this foul-smelling red herring of an argument about the Eastern rites and get in contact the rector. Tell him to inform "One-Hand" that he cannot ordain the Rev. Mr. Nkamuke to the priesthood unless Dannie remedies the defect.

The rector may ignore your petition:  He might not be capable of summoning the empathy to imagine a holy, young priest's agony over doubts about whether he can truly confect the awesome miracle of Mass in behalf of the trusting faithful. To help you convince him, you'll have to appeal to his outsized pride.

Pistrina can help.

Next week we'll expose the worst bit of the Blunderer's sophistry -- worse than his erroneous translation of papal teaching. The rector may finally see how he was made to look the fool when he fell for the assurances that Tony has researched the problem and there is no doubt that one hand is sufficient.

It's time to retract the retraction. The rector and his eight clerical running buddies were right on the money in 1990. There was then, and there still remains now, loads and loads of doubt, doubt aggravated by the Blunderer's awkward attempt to make it disappear.

* Likewise, another rite's current practice is of no import either.

**E. Regatillo, Ius Sacramentarium (2nd Edition, Sal Terrae, 1949), p. 469.

***Teología Moral para Seglares, II (BAC, 1961), p. 494 , ❡c; Si hay duda fundada y prudente sobre si faltó or no algo esencial, debe repetirse sub conditione la ordenación, aunque se hubiera recibido ya una orden superior.... We'll come back to this entire section in a future post when we, in Christian candor, advise "One Hand" what he must do and why he should do it.